As electronic services (e.g., search services, electronic mail services, social networking services, cloud computing services, etc.) continue to expand, providers of the electronic services operate networks of devices to provide the electronic services. However, due to the large number of inter-connected and dependent devices within an individual network, it is often difficult for a provider to continuously operate a network in an efficient and reliable manner. For instance, a switch device within a network may be tasked with communicating a message from a source device to a destination device but may be unable to communicate the message because at a given moment, when the message is to be communicated via the switch device, an application that maintains and updates the switch device may have disabled at least some of the functionality of the switch device, e.g., so that it can receive a firmware update. Consequently, the network may experience an interruption that may affect the efficiency and reliability of the network.
Furthermore, multiple applications may attempt to simultaneously control a state of a network device resulting in a state conflict. For example, a first application may attempt to route traffic through the switch device while a second application attempts to shut down the switch device so that it can receive an update.